This was directly inspired by the scene from Adaptation in which Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper imitate a dial tone. I'm including it in this post because it's a nice, funny little scene and because you get to see Meryl snorting what looks like green cocaine. And dial tones are sort of soothing, aren't they? They're generally preferable to hearing someone actually talk.
P.S. - If someone ever tells you Meryl Streep isn't great, you can go ahead and spit in his eye for me! Viva la Streep!
Wow, this is a grim one. What can I say, folks? It goes with the territory of writing a cartoon about a dead guy. But should love be the exclusive domain of the living? Science suggests otherwise. I recently came across this 2010 clip with the self-explanatory title Japanese Robot Girlfriend.
The prototype JRG seems pleasant enough but rather cold, and it was a mistake to dress her as an actual nurse instead of a nurse in a 1980s music video. Perhaps what's needed here is some musical inspiration. There are a surprising number of tunes about the love lives of machines.
Here from Hollywood's golden year of 1939 is the possibly earliest example of the form, as crooned by the immortal Jack Haley:
Earnest and poignant if not exactly arousing. As an example of how quickly music evolves over time, here is a jumpin' little number by Wynonie Harris from 1951, a mere eleven years later:
Sadly, the romance of machinery does not seem to have been a major theme in popular music for most of the 1950s and 1960s. The Miracles, however, brought the theme back big time in 1975:
That #1 hit was almost certainly the inspiration for this bizarre 1978 disco number by Dee D. Jackson:
And who can forget Marvin the Paranoid Android's contribution to the subgenre from 1981:
I couldn't very well end this little survey without mentioning that there are not one but two great songs called "Computer Love," one by Zapp & Roger and one by Kraftwerk. Here they both are:
Weren't those nice? Kinda makes you see the machines in your life in a different way, right? Right?!?
Oh, forget it. I'm going into the kitchen and getting freaky with the toaster. Don't judge me.
I think what Zomby needs in life is a coach, someone to inspire him and point him in the right direction. Someone like... Coach Bobby Finstock.
Jay Tarses as Coach Bobby Finstock in Teen Wolf
Jay Tarses is truly one of the legends of 1970s and 1980s TV comedy. As a writer and producer, he worked on such beloved shows as The Bob Newhart Show, The Carol Burnett Show, Buffalo Bill, and The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, as well as the short-lived but well-regarded Open All Night. Tarses was probably one of the first behind-the-scenes people whose names I noticed popping up in the credits over and over again, and there was even an inside reference to him on Taxi when Louie DePalma's high school rival was named "Stanley Tarses." And if that's not enough, Jay co-wrote two of the first three Muppet movies. Really, it's a sterling resume.
But that's not why you probably know him.
You probably know him as Coach Bobby Finstock from Teen Wolf. Whatever you may think of that movie (and I happen to like it), you cannot deny the hilarity of Tarses' performance as the utterly pragmatic, laissez-faire basketball coach. Here's a good montage of Tarses as Finstock in "action":
"It doesn't matter how you play the game, it's whether you win or lose. And even that doesn't make all that much difference." - Coach Bobby Finstock
Words to live by.
But before we leave the topic of Teen Wolf forever, here's a selection from the film's soundtrack -- Mark Vieha's "Way To Go." Why not use it to underscore your next werewolf basketball montage?
Cheer up, Zom. Here's something that'll put your problems into their proper perspective....
One of the rarest yet sweetest pleasures in television is to see a contestant on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? fail on the very first question. Even casual viewers of the show will know that those opening queries are very easy and are seldom missed. But occasionally, a contestant will get one wrong, and the look of utter bewilderment and slowly dawning horror on that person's face is something gorgeous to behold.
And behold we shall...
There. Now don't we all feel a little better about ourselves?
While Zomby and his rodent pal formulate their plans for the evening, let's you and I turn our attention to more inspiring matters.
Craig Breedlove and the Spirit of America, circa 1962.
Craig Breedlove. Could any dime novelist think up a better name for a hero than that? Just the right number of syllables, too. Born in 1937, Breedlove was the courageous (or foolhardy) driver who broke the land speed record on five separate occasions between 1963 and 1965 in a series of vehicles dubbed Spirit of America. These "cars" were really wingless jet planes, and you could really only "drive" them in isolated locations like the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. I'm not sure what was the ultimate good of all this. Records like these do not and cannot stand, of course, as technology inevitably improves over time. The current title holder in this ridiculous category is Britain's Andy Green, who achieved a speed of 760 mph back in 1997, while Breedlove never quite cracked 600. A mere century before Green, the land speed record was something like 40 mph, a velocity which most people achieve each day on their way to work.
But back in '63, Breedlove and his earthbound rocket car proved a source of inspiration to one of America's greatest groups, The Beach Boys. Their song "Spirit of America," which Brian Wilson himself cowrote and sang as part of the Little Deuce Coupe LP, is neither about spirits nor about America. It's not really even a patriotic song, though I've occasionally heard it on the radio around the Fourth of July. Instead, it's a gushy, romantic tribute to Breedlove's achievements in velocity on the remote salt flats of Utah. If you spoke no English and heard this song, you would probably guess that Brian Wilson was singing about his love for some suntanned beach bunny. But, no, it's a song about a rocket car.
POSTSCRIPT: This song's strange but potent combination of wistful romanticism and high-octane auto racing makes it a predecessor to one of the Beach Boys' true masterpieces, the gorgeous ballad "Don't Worry Baby" from 1964. Like "Spirit of America," this was cowritten by Brian Wilson and radio personality Roger Christian with Brian again handling the lead vocals. To me, this song is one of the great musical achievements of the Twentieth Century. Hope you enjoy.
No time today to do an all-new Zomby!, but here is a recent cartoon rendered in glorious red-and-blue 3D:
Technically, these kinds of images are called anaglyphs, and I'm afraid the above is a rather clumsy example of the form, though it has a certain trippy charm.
Just so you will not feel your time here was wasted, here are a few more skillful anaglyphs collected from the web:
And finally, here's Captain EO himself in (remarkably good) 3D:
